The research for this project focuses on examining the role of popular media and social media in documenting and preserving Black American experiences, shaping cultural values and worldviews, and creating a collective sense of identity and aspirations. The project explores and utilizes a wide range of digital media, including digital archives, podcasts, and social media content.
The goal of this research project is to show how popular media (such as social media, television, and film) might be used to document Black cultural experiences, preserve stories, and give us insight into pressing social issues, whether historical or contemporary. The project includes two distinct elements that work toward achieving this research goal: 1) analyzing Black content creators, with a special focus on family vloggers and kidfluencers and 2) public-facing digital humanities production, which involves a podcast about Black representation in tv and film and a vlog series for the Digital Black Girls online archive (digitalblackgirls.org).
USOAR student researchers will contribute to this project by collecting and categorizing relevant social media content; compiling and summarizing academic journal articles, books, news stories, and blog posts; recording content for the vlog series; and preparing podcast show notes (with training and instructions provided by the faculty mentor). This work is motivated by a need to make academic research digestible and relevant to communities outside of the university. Overall, the project allows us to turn the media we use in our everyday lives into resources for understanding and addressing sociocultural challenges.
• General familiarity with major social media platforms, especially Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
• Writing skills, including, but not limited to, paraphrasing and summarizing academic texts.
• Basic website management (or willingness to learn). This includes using programs like Canva, Wix, or Wordpress to build and maintain a website. No coding skills are necessary.
Through participating in this project, student researchers will:
• Learn how to incorporate digital/social media tools within research.
• Realize the importance of cultural production in understanding and addressing broad societal issues.
• Gain practical skills (such as website management, writing in accessible language, and research documentation/reporting) that will serve them in academic and non-academic settings.